Berlin Wall part of local couple's personal story

They had been preparing for weeks, tightening security, building a stage, scrubbing graffiti from the wall, and positioning loudspeakers to carry the speech over the wall to East Berlin.

Maj. Gen. John H. Mitchell greeted President Ronald Reagan on June 12, 1987, as he exited Air Force One, and by the time Reagan began his speech at the Brandenburg Gate, an estimated 50,000 people stretched out before him, with thousands more on the east side of the wall.

Mitchell, now retired in Colorado Springs, was the commanding general of the American section of Berlin from 1984 to 1988. But he was as surprised as anyone during the speech, when Reagan turned around and said, “Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!”

“There was a thunder of cheers, and we could hear cheers from the east side of the wall,” said Joan Cameron Mitchell, the general’s wife. “It was riveting.”

At the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, those six words from Reagan’s mouth have become amplified in the public imagination, remembered as the first blow at the foundations of the iconic Cold War structure.

At the time, the Mitchells thought it was a noble sentiment, but not realistic. They never dreamed that the wall would be breached 17 months later, the same day they broke ground on their retirement home in the military town where they met.

The couple experienced heady times in West Berlin, rubbing shoulders with dignitaries and celebrities who came to the island within the Soviet bloc to witness the wall. As the top dog, Mitchell was given a 52-room mansion with a staff of nine. The Mitchells met Princess Diana and Queen Elizabeth II, and enjoyed a private audience with Pope John Paul II.

Actor Kirk Douglas saw Joan Mitchell’s artwork and invited her to his ranch to paint his portrait — a copy of her finished watercolor hangs in the basement of her Broadmoor-area home.
The Mitchells’ home is also festooned with artifacts from their time in Germany. There are several large chunks of the Berlin Wall. The flag that was flying over Checkpoint Charlie as East Germans tore down the wall is now folded and encased in their library.

It’s clear that the constant presence of that divisive line became a part of their personal story, a symbol embedded in their psyche. And 20 years ago today, it became a triumph.

Oddly enough, the evidence of the role the Berlin Wall played in the Mitchell family’s life is on grand and gaudy display in “Hedwig and the Angry Inch,” the biggest transgender rock ‘n’ roll cult film since “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”

The surprise 2001 hit was written and directed by John Cameron Mitchell — the couple’s son — and he starred as Hedwig. Hedwig is from East Berlin, and the wall becomes a metaphor for her life and gender identity.

Joan Cameron Mitchell, 76, is a charming woman who still carries the accent of her native Scotland. She often jumps in to tell the stories from Berlin.

Part of the reason she’s the storyteller is that she kept detailed journals of their adventures, and she has transformed them into the self-published book, “Tear Down This Wall! A Berlin Memoir: 1984-1988.”
And part of it is that the general’s memory is failing him. Mitchell, 76, has been diagnosed with Alzheimer’s disease.

He is socially adept and has a presence that quietly commands respect — qualities that once furthered his military career, and now camouflage his struggles.

But it is his wife who tells the story of a “skinny lieutenant” who asked her to dance to the sounds of a jukebox at Fort Carson, who recalls their 1961 marriage at the Pauline Chapel in Colorado Springs as a wall was being erected in Europe, and who describes the thundering of Reagan’s voice at the Brandenburg Gate.
She looks adoringly at her husband.

“He’s never lost his figure,” she said.

“I’ve lost my mind a few times,” he said, smiling.

And so her book is a good tale, but it is also a gift to her husband. He said he can recover some moments as they talk, or when he reads about them again.

Alzheimer’s might be stealing his memories from him, slowly making off with the story of his life. But his wife is determined to take it back and help him remember what he did, that she is proud of him, and that in the powerful play of the Berlin Wall he contributed a verse.